Cowen breaks silence on guarantee

Former taoiseach Brian Cowen has defended his government’s blanket bank guarantee in 2008 but said it should have raised taxes and cut spending.

In his first public comments since leaving office, Mr Cowen said in a speech given at Georgetown University in the US that his government felt it would get “one shot” at calming the markets.

“Whether a narrower guarantee would have staved off an implosion of the banking system at a lower cost to the state is a matter for economic historians to ruminate on. We had to deal with this crisis in real time. Our view at the time was that we would get one shot at calming the markets.”